Such the bard's prophetic words, Pregnant with celestial fire, Bending as he swept the chords Of his sweet but awful lyre.

"Boadicea" (1782).

Sweet stream that winds through yonder glade,
Apt emblem of a virtuous maid
Silent and chaste she steals along,
Far from the world's gay busy throng:
With gentle yet prevailing force,
Intent upon her destined course;
Graceful and useful all she does,
Blessing and blest where'er she goes;
Pure-bosom'd as that watery glass,
And Heaven reflected in her face.

"To a Young Lady" (1782).

Candid, and generous, and just,
Boys care but little whom they trust,
An error soon corrected—
For who but learns in riper years
That man, when smoothest he appears
Is most to be suspected?

An honest man, close-buttoned to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within.

"Epistle to Joseph Hill", line 62 (1785).

Shine by the side of every path we tread
With such a luster, he that runs may read.

"Tirocinium", line 79 (1785).

Toll for the brave —
The brave! that are no more;
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!

"On the Loss of the Royal George", st. 1 (1791).

And still to love, though prest with ill,
In wintry age to feel no chill,
With me is to be lovely still,
My Mary!

"To Mary", st. 11 (1791).

I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.

The Iliad of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791), Preface.

As when around the clear bright moon, the stars
Shine in full splendor, and the winds are hush'd,
The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland-heights
Stand all apparent, not a vapor streaks
The boundless blue, but ether open'd wide
All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd.

The Iliad of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791), Book VIII, line 643.

My soul
Shall bear that also; for, by practice taught,
I have learned patience, having much endured.

The Odyssey of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791), Book V, line 264.

Visits are insatiable devourers of time, and fit only for those who, if they did not that, would do nothing.

Letter to the Rev. John Johnson, (29 September1793).

Beware of desp'rate steps! The darkest day
(Live till tomorrow) will have passed away.

"The Needless Alarm, Moral" (1794).

Misses! the tale that I relate
This lesson seems to carry —
Choose not alone a proper mate,
But proper time to marry.

"Pairing Time Anticipated, Moral" (c. 1794).

Misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case.

"The Castaway" (1799).

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
We perish'd, each alone;
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulphs than he.

"The Castaway" (1799).

A knave, when tried on honesty's plain rule,
And, when by that of reason, a mere fool

I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

Line 34.

Which not even critics criticise.

Line 51.

What is it but a map of busy life,
Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?

Line 55.

And Katerfelto, with his hair on end
At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.
'T is pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
To peep at such a world,—to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.

Line 86.

While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.

Line 118.

O Winter, ruler of the inverted year!

Line 120.

With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,
And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.

Line 217.

In indolent vacuity of thought.

Line 297.

It seems the part of wisdom.

Line 336.

All learned, and all drunk!

Line 478.

Gloriously drunk, obey the important call.

Line 510.

Those golden times
And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings,
And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.

Line 514.

The Frenchman's darling.

Line 765.

Some must be great. Great offices will have
Great talents. And God gives to every man
The virtue, temper, understanding, taste,
That lifts him into life, and lets him fall
Just in the niche he was ordain'd to fill.

Silently as a dream the fabric rose —
No sound of hammer or of saw was there.

Line 144.

But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at.

Line 187.

The beggarly last doit.

Line 316.

As dreadful as the Manichean god,
Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.

Line 444.

The still small voice is wanted.

Line 685.

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.

Line 733.

With filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say, My Father made them all!

Line 745.

Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste
His works. Admitted once to his embrace,
Thou shalt perceive that thou was blind before:
Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart
Made pure shall relish with divine delight
Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.

Line 779.

Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor;
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk, or grave:
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet!

Line 1.

Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.

Line 85.

Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft-times no connexion, Knowledge dwells
in heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

Line 88.

Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which wisdom builds,
Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells.

Line 92.

Some to the fascination of a name
Surrender judgment hoodwink'd.

The Task, book vi. Winter Walk at Noon, line 101.

Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God.

Line 223.

Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of his unrivall'd pencil.

Line 240.

But many a crime deem'd innocent on earth
Is register'd in Heaven; and these no doubt
Have each their record, with a curse annex'd.
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,
But God will never.

Line 439.

I would not enter on my list of friends,
(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarn'd,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.

Forced from home and all its pleasures
Afric's coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger's treasures
O'er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold.

It seems idolatry with some excuse,
When our forefather Druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity.

Lines 9-11

Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs
And all thine embryo vastness at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed.

The mind of Cowper was, so to speak, naturally terrestrial. If a man wishes for a nice appreciation of the details of time and sense, let him consult Cowper's miscellaneous letters. Each simple event of every day—each petty object of external observation or inward suggestion, is there chronicled with a fine and female fondness, a wise and happy faculty, let us say, of deriving a gentle happiness from the tranquil and passing hour.

Cowper, writing after Pope, had the advantage of knowing what to avoid; but he was misled by a false analogy, and seeing in Milton a great epic poet, austere in his manner and repellent of meretricious ornament, attempted to force on Homer a style which, rightly considered, is almost as artificial as Virgil's, and which, moreover, he was himself unequal to wield.

John Conington, on Cowper's translation of Homer, in Oxford Essays (1855), "The Poetry of Pope", p. 30.

Have you ever read the letters of the poet Cowper? He had nothing—literally nothing—to tell anyone about; private life in a sleepy country town where Evangelical distrust of "the world" denied him even such miserable society as the place would have afforded. And yet one reads a whole volume of his letters with unfailing interest. How his tooth came loose at dinner, how he made a hutch for a tame hare, what he is doing about his cucumbers—all this he makes one follow as if the fate of empires hung on it.

C. S. Lewis, letter to his father (25 February 1928) — in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), p. 124.

We can not but admire a man who, subject to a lifelong illness that inflicted with frequent recurrence an intense mental agony, fought persistently against his weakness—at times their master, at times a victim to their influence. Still he did not flinch even under this torture, but held his pen and pressed it to write in a cause which was distinctly unpopular. Cowper was preeminently a poet of feelings; he may have been melancholy, but he pointed out to his readers how they were themselves subjects of emotion. He owed a debt to Providence, and he rebuked the people for their follies. In doing so he was regardless of his own fame and of their opprobrium. He gave them tolerable advice, and strove to awaken them from their apathy to a sense of their duty towards their neighbours. First of poets, since the days of Milton, to champion the sacredness of religion, he was the forerunner of a new school that disliked the political satires of the disciples of Pope, and aimed at borrowing for their lines of song from the simple beauties of a perfect nature.